We anthropologists talk about anthropology, scholarly lives and academicpractices constantly in our offices, corridors, coffee breaks,administrative meetings, and over drinks. Our foci are often immediate,urgent, consequential, disturbing and challenging. Often there is limitedtime or commitment to also talk about how we envision our discipline orour visions for our own scholarly lives and projects, Yet, in doinganthropology every day we engage with and create visions of anthropology,of relations to colleagues, of scholarly practices, and of the milieu inwhich we live. These visions are ever changing and situated, but theirpresence and effects are of mutual concern. The fragmentary way we addressvisions and agency, and the urgency and sometimes discomfort we may feelas we do so hint at the challenges we face individually and collectivelytoday. This plenary seeks to create a space of dialogues where groundedvisions and the experiences that connect them can be explored amongcolleagues.

The speakers at the plenary were invited to reflect on the emergingvisions of anthropology - from various perspectives - includingdifferently situated historical, generational, analytical, ethnographic,and engaged experiences. The talks being developed are diverse, but theabstracts nevertheless reflect a surprisingly recurrent set of themes.Among these: anthropology in the world, including anthropologicalrelations to processes of ethnography, power, politics, and agency;questions about what a long-standing but widening commitment to criticalstances has meant and may yet become in anthropology, and the relations ofsuch critical commitments to anthropology's ever shifting marginality;anthropological relationships to universities and disciplines, and itschanging place in neo-liberal academia; anthropology's challenges withinthe post-disciplinary power of expertise, especially in relation to theeveryday lives of the people and students we engage with; anthropology'sre-turn to ethnography and to foci on conflicts, modernity, resistance,coexistence, agency and social movements; and the continuing challenges weface as intellectuals and citizens.